In recent years, customers increasingly use postcards with picture images attached thereto for the greeting of marriage or the greeting of the New Year or other purposes. Also, business cards with photos are often used. There is proposed a network business that handles the creation order of these postcards and business cards with picture images attached thereto via the Internet and other networks (for example, see Patent Document 1).
In this case, a customer, for example, selects a predetermined layout or determines the layout such as a position of a specific picture image and a position of text information. The customer inputs as the text information, for example, an address, a name, a greeting text and other information. The picture image may be a single sheet or several sheets synthesized together, and the customer sends the picture image(s) and orders a design thereof. Further, the customer may order corrections such as deletion of unnecessary background from the picture image(s) and removal of red-eye.
On the basis of such a design order from the customer, in an output center and other places carrying out the image print service, an administrator places an order of the design creation work to a worker such as a designer, and upon completion of the design creation work, the administrator makes the customer confirm that the created design does not differ from the design the customer ordered, and then prints out and sends the final product to the customer.
In the network business described in Patent Document 1, the customer can cause the image created by the design work to be displayed in a terminal owned by the customer via the Internet with a browser software to confirm that the created design does not differ from the design order.
(Patent Document 1)
Japanese Patent Publication Laid-Open No. 2002-149793 (pages 1 through 8, FIGS. 1 through 10)
However, correction leakage may occur particularly in small characters (for example, E-mail addresses and the like) that are difficult to confirm depending on the display window of the terminal owned by the customer. Further, the customer has been able to print out an image created by the design work using a printer or other devices owned by the customer by downloading the image data of the image to be displayed in the terminal owned by the customer. Because the output center or other places is originally operated for the purpose of the profit capable of being earned by printing out images, the profit is reduced or lost if the customer prints out as described above, and thereby the profit as business is reduced by half.
To prevent the customer from downloading the image as it is created by the design work, for example, there are a method of displaying an image with characters such as “Sample” superimposed thereon to be displayed in a terminal owned by the customer and a method of causing the image to be displayed at low resolution, and with the former method, the customer cannot surely confirm the design because the image created by the design work is partially hidden, and with the latter, the customer may not judge that the design is good or bad because the impression of the displayed image is altered.